Average Budget

Thank you for all the replies! This has put a lot of things into perspective for me!

Like others have said, budget can really vary depending on your priorities and what you feel is worth spending money on. I had a small wedding due to covid this year but was planning for a 100 person wedding in Vancouver (technically in New Westminster) in November 2020. We were budgeting around $20,000, but I think we would have ended up a few thousand over if thing had gone to plan.

The majority of that was food/alcohol/venue. Our venue was just for the space and it was $3,000. It was slightly more than I wanted to spend but we fell in love with the place when we saw it. Unfortunately we never got to use it and it's being turned into condos now

I feel like venues in Vancouver are so incredibly expensive. I did so much research and there was very little available for less than $2,500 or so that I liked. Since you have less people you'll have more options and you might be able to get away with less. One benefit of having an empty shell sort of venue is we could bring in our own caterer and bar. We budgeted about $6,000 for catering and $3,000 for the bar. We think the bar budget was probably too high but we didn't want to run out of alcohol. We planned on returning whatever we didn't use.

We planned to make a playlist on Spotify and use that for our reception because we didn't want to pay for a DJ. We also didn't pay our officiant, as she was someone we knew - we did get her a gift though. We were going to skip favours and our late night snack would have been dominos - a much cheaper option than going through a caterer.

Our other expenses were roughly as follows (including tax):

Photography - $2250

Day of coordinator - $1200

Dress/accessories - $2500

Groom's outfit/accessories - $1000

Decor/rentals/greenery - $1000

We didn't include our wedding bands in the budget because we figured they are more of an investment that we'll have forever. That being said, you could tack on an additional $2000 or so for both of those, but that cost is also so variable depending on what you and your partner want and what your styles are.

You could easily spend more or less on all of these things. In particular, I think we got a great photographer for a really reasonable price. A lot of the people I looked into were charging $3,500 and upwards. On the other hand, if you want florals you can increase that amount by an infinite amount depending on the look you're going for.

Best of luck to you!

Costs can average on where you want to make it and make it work accordingly.

Our wedding was somewhat less the $20K. The venue itself was about $8K including gratuity and taxes. Some ideas to consider cutting costs in the areas of

Rental over Purchase: Compare the prices of centerpieces, backdrop, décor and dress (optional) to see how much less it would cost vs. retail costs. The second reason for this idea is returning or the breakdown service by the vendor than to store at home taking up space unneeded. Another source for getting good prices is the marketplaces of kijiji, facebook and Letgo to buy from sellers half the price.

Vendors: Inquiring about packages and prices, it would vary on what you want done and how long of a time too. Vendors who are willing to work with you to replace or adjust some of the packages to your needs and budget would be great. Reading reviews does help too to know if their service stands behind their professionalism.

Venue: Packages pricing will vary on what you want to envision your day and cost of food and alcohol per person to average out for your guest list. Sit down dinner would be a great option since they would not consider buffet due to Covid. Cash bar saves you more as oppose to Open bar for the price of the whole evening of your budget to consider this option.

Favours: Edible gifts being on a lower cost of your choice of candy, chocolates or jams/preserves are nice to use at home if you feel actual gifts don't get used at all and sit away in the closet.

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That's exactly our thought on it too! We'd rather put our money into other things that was more important to us for the wedding then alcohol

We wanted an open bar and lots of food so of course our venue is where most of our money went. Our bar tab is included with our meal. We also we very adamant about having a Saturday wedding (his half of family is coming from a couple hours away). In order to make our costs much lower we are having a winter wedding which also has so many perks for me. I can't stress how much nicer it is for the men to not be sweating in their suits for a starter. Im hoping we have a bit of snow (not blizzard) for some amazing winter photo shots. The package we chose would be about double if we had our wedding in the spring, summer or fall. We also will have the ceremony at the venue to keep travelling down. My photographer is a friend who (when I first hired her) was just starting out so I got a sweet deal from her plus she is getting more experience in the meantime. My DJ is also a friend who is also giving me a fantastic deal but she doesn't do many weddings.

View quoted message Good for you! I’m holding strong on this - we’re already so crunched for our budget and I just don’t see the value in allocating funds towards an open bar over food or photography!

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To be honest, no! We told our family what we wanted to do and why and they were on board. They totally understood. Both of our families and friends like to drink a lot since we're both Ukrainian lol and we don't want to have a huge bill at the end of the night. If some family and friends don't like it then so be it. They don't have to drink. It's our day and we're going to do what is best for us. We're not the typical wedding couple lol

View quoted message That’s a very good point, Hank!!

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I would personally do drink tickets instead of a tab limit. You don't want the few overzealous relatives use up the tab by ordering a ton of drinks for themselves at once just to have others be expected to pay when they haven't even had one drink yet. And with drink tickets, non-drinkers can give their ticket to drinkers for an extra.

Here's a few "average" costs - keep in mind, things can ALWAYS be cheaper depending on what you want and what you're willing to sacrifice.

Marriage license - $100 in BC

Officiant - $200-$500 depending on the area and denomination. Some churches also ask for an additional "donation"

Food and Bar - $150 - $200 per head for a traditional multi-course sit down formal dinner with open bar held in a hall. More affordable options include going to a restaurant instead of a hall, hosting a lunch instead of dinner, having a cocktail party with passed around hors d'oeuvres instead of a sit down meal.

Rings - $2000 for a pair of gold bands. More if you want bling. Cheaper options include silicone or sterling silver rings.

His Clothes - tux/suit rentals are around $250. For suits, I highly suggest buying instead of renting. Unless you're going for made to measure or bespoke, the price difference is minimal and you get a much better ROI when buying.

Speaking of the bar, if you're having a cash bar, tell your guests in advance. I cannot stress this enough.

Everything else like DJ/band, photography/videography, decor, cake, additional events like rehearsal dinner and bridal showers, and other add-ons like dress changes will vary wildly depend on what you want and the skill level of the vendor you hire.

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Oh that's a good idea! I personally don't see anything wrong with asking guests to pay for their own alcohol (we'd provide a glass of wine with the meal) but that's a good in between!

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Our venue did give the option of paying a certain amount on the bar tab. So, if we wanted to pay $500, then our guests would start to buy drinks once the tab hit our budget. That's an option as well.

We did an open bar as we had few guests...worked out well! The folks at the venue said they hadn't seen a bar bill so low! Haha!

Less people doesn’t necessarily make it cheaper. Pre covid, we had a guest list of 150 and post covid our guest list dropped to 50. I decided to switch the venue to a winery, and turns out a wedding for 50 people cost the same as our original wedding of 150. That’s because I wanted the up scale winery. I thought, if I can’t have my big wedding then at least I can have a really elegant / stunning wedding. So, it really depends on what you want. What kind of venue do you want? What kind of food? Open bar? Photographer? Videographer? Dress? I would sit down and write a list of what’s important to you, and start price matching vendors.

View quoted message Amanda, are you finding any pushback towards the cash bar? That’s our plan so we can keep within our budget (plus we don’t even drink!) but I’m finding that everyone from my parents to friends are looking at us as though that’s just not the done thing! But it would really help us out to avoid doing an open bar (plus I find they can be really wasteful)

I would say it's hard to find the average price of a wedding. Every wedding is different. I would sit down with your fiance and talk about what is the most important vendors to you. (DJ, Photographer, Cake, Food, Where you want to get married as well) Then go from there. Also how many guests will help with the price

I'm getting married in Kelowna, and our venue was really important to us as well as our photographer and the food. So that's where a big chunk of our money is going. With that being said because of covid our budget might come down by next summer with having to possibly have less guests at our wedding. We're also have a cash bar so everyone will be paying for their own alcohol, which will save us a BIG chunk of money in the end

It can be really hard to find an average. Sit down with your fiance and figure out what the most important things for each of you are (food? photos? having a dj?) because those are things you might want to splurge on a little. Our budget was thrown out of whack by covid because we had a small wedding this year and hope to have our reception in 2021, but my parents chipped in more this year than they had originally planned for (asking your family how much they may contribute or what they can help pay for feels awkward but you really should so everyone is clear on those expectations).


There are lots of ways to save money so that you can better afford to splurge on what you feel if most important. For example we had planned a Friday night ceremony and reception without a full meal. It made our photographer a little more affordable, our venue gave us a deal, and we saved the cost of meals for everyone. You can also plan to go minimal on decor, buy second hand from newlyweds (I bought most of our candleholders on facebook and got a sweet deal, and I'll sell them later!), or cut something neither of you care about like favors or the garter toss or having cake *and* desert(s). Skipping an open bar in favor of a cash or toonie bar can also save you an arm and a leg. It's all about the two of you so at the end of the day spend only what you're comfortable with on the wedding that you want.

I started off looking at different venues at different price points and went from there. I made a list of every item (venue, caterer, photographer etc) and got a sense of what each item line would cost. My fiancé didn’t want to spend too much for only one day of our lives, some venues I saw are 15,000 just for the venue!
We settled on a number we were comfortable with , and tried to cut costs and work a wedding into that number. Some things we couldn’t cut cost on - our caterer bill is $$!! So we will be over what we originally stated but both happy with what our day will be.